Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, May 24th
CheeseIsGood, a winner of a $1,000,000 1st-place prize on both DraftKings and FanDuel, is here to give you his musings on the upcoming MLB DFS slate. Whether you are looking for the top pitchers or the best stacks, Cheese has you covered with an extensive deep dive into his MLB DFS picks.
Happy Friday! We’ve got a good-looking 11-game slate that features plenty to like on both the pitching and hitting sides. However, the weather might throw a huge monkey wrench into things, as two of the top pitchers on the slate are at risk of being lost. The early morning report on our MLB Weather page has BAL/CWS at Orange/Red and the CHC/STL game at Orange. With Corbin Burnes and Shota Imanaga in those two games, the pitching landscape changes dramatically without those games. I’ll include them in the rankings for now, but we will need to keep a close eye on this throughout the day.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
The top tier is completely different depending on what happens with Burnes and Imanaga. I’m also putting Justin Verlander in this tier based on my early assumptions about what his ownership will be. In reality, as we’ll discuss, he’s actually just a second-tier pitcher for me tonight.
TOP-TIER PITCHING
Corbin Burnes at White Sox – 25.6% K, 6.4% BB, 2.56 ERA, 3.23 SIERA
Shota Imanaga at Cardinals – 27.8% K, 4.3% BB, 0.84 ERA, 3.01 SIERA
Zac Gallen vs. Marlins – 26.8% K, 6.8% BB, 3.02 ERA, 3.32 SIERA
Justin Verlander at A’s – 18.7% K, 10.1% BB, 3.97 ERA, 5.12 SIERA
At this point in the day, I don’t see a strong likelihood of being able to justify paying the highest salaries on the slate for two pitchers whose games might not even play. What I’ll say is that if the weather clears up, Corbin Burnes and Shota Imanaga are my top two pitchers. But even as silly-good as Imanaga has been, I don’t think it’s some sort of must-play at $11,000 against a low-strikeout lineup. With Burnes, he would be my SP1 in this matchup, but I’m really just assuming this game is a no-go.
The next thing I want to talk about it is where Justin Verlander would fall in this tier if we had Imanaga and Burnes available.
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